Directors Guild Boss Insists That Everyone Against SOPA/PIPA Was Duped

from the wanna-run-that-one-by-people-again? dept

We're still waiting for the supposed "new tone" of the conversation from Hollywood following its failed attempt to expand copyright/anti-piracy laws for the 16th time in the last 3 decades. There were some early claims that the widespread protests had made Hollywood realize that rather than passing bad legislation by working out deals with "friendly" Congress people in backrooms, it wanted to have a "conversation" with those who opposed SOPA/PIPA.

Well, Taylor Hackford, the head of the Directors Guild of America, apparently has a different opinion on all that. He went on the Pat Morrison radio show to go off on a wild rant about how everyone against SOPA/PIPA were duped via lies from companies like Google who want to protect all their profits. What was amazing was the number of blatantly false statements Hackford made in making his argument. Beyond the fact that he ignored tons of very legitimate concerns from engineers, online security experts and First Amendment scholars who clearly were not "duped," he also makes a bunch of statements that don't pass the laugh test.

For example, he repeatedly claimed that the movie industry employs two million people -- and he mocked the tech industry for not employing many people at all (and implying that they mostly employ people outside the country). According to the Congressional Research Service, the movie industry actually employs 374,000 people. Further research showed that jobs in actual film and movie productionhave been growing. Meanwhile, a recent study showed that just the Facebook apps economy alone created nearly 500,000 jobs. That second number may be exaggerated somewhat, but comparing how many jobs the movie industry has created with how many the internet industry has created isn't going to make Hackford look very good.

Then there was the specific attack on Wikipedia, where he first said that Wikipedia was a "stalking horse" (and he suggests an unidentified "they" convinced Wikipedia to shut down). Then he says that by shutting down:

"They robbed the public of important information in order to make their point"

The "they" is still not identified, but a good way to demonize opponents is to take away any identifying marks, so it's this mysterious "they." But, seriously? Robbed the public? This from an industry which has repeatedly pushed for extensions to copyright term -- something that actually does take away content that the public was supposed to have a legal right to? I recognize that Hollywood has trouble understanding what "robbed" actually means, but Wikipedia blocking access didn't rob anyone of anything. But, if we're going to go with Hackford's claim that withholding content from the public is theft, then, as Derek Kerton suggests, doesn't that mean that the movie release windows that Hackford and his buddies in Hollywood rely on are "robbing the public"? After all, it's withholding information -- and it happens for a lot longer than the one day that Wikipedia went dark (and for which there were easy workarounds).

Of course, even more ironic was that while Morrison's show is nominally a "call-in" show... people who called in were told that Mr. Hackford was not allowing any calls during his segment. Instead, people were left to comment on the radio show's website... where the vast, vast majority of folks were quick to pick apart Hackford's ridiculous claims and ask the station why it didn't have anyone expressing a counterpoint.

Reader Comments

I used to think that the NWO (New World Order) was just a conspiracy theory. Now it seem the RIAA, MPAA, and other big content providers have made it conspiracy fact. Nice to know, Thanks to them I have some apologies to make.

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It gets difficult to bring up these topics without sounding like a conspiracy theorist anyway. Keep in mind, if it's not an Internetian you're talking with, they've likely never heard or seen anything that hasn't come straight from the machine.

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Well, because of the internet...NWO is impossible. Even if they are trying, they are failing and miserably...The pandoras box called the internet was open, nothing short of the collapse of civilization due to a catastrophic even (massive nukes, asteroid) will stop what is going to happen.

what is going to happen?

I believe its going to be a interconnected world where country boundaries will no longer matter, while governments will still have there boundaries, information will not and its information that creates our community's, not governments

The RIAA and MPAA can fight against this all they want, in fact, i suspect it will get worse; the protest against pipa and sopa where examples of the power of the world community compared to country community.

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Plausible deniability. Their paradox inducing crumple zones can't accept taking down Megaupload to "prevent piracy" nor can they process the hypocrisy of 660 other domains being taken without due process.

We weren't duped. We honestly do want the old legacy entertainment industry to die so it will finally get out of our political affairs and we can see it replaced with forward thinking innovative companies.

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According to the Congressional Research Service, the movie industry actually employs 374,000 people. Further research showed that jobs in actual film and movie production have been growing. Meanwhile, a recent study showed that just the Facebook apps economy alone created nearly 500,000 jobs.

So you compare the direct number of people employed in the motion picture industry (which is suspect due to SAG and AFTRA alone having a membership of 300,000) then add 113,000 from IATSE and another 15,000 DGA members plus Teamster drivers you're already over 400,000 without adding a single regular employee of the studios) to jobs created by Facebook.

WTF is that Masnick? Do you really have to make such absurd apples-to-oranges comparisons in order to score a point? Facebook has 3000 employees, not 500,000. Why don't you the same multiplier for the motion picture industry?

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If he did that, he wouldn't be INDUSTRY SHILL MAN! (new superhero, movie's coming out next summer, the reboot of the series 2 summers after that)

Honestly, though, it was a bit poorly-worded. All the numbers used so far have been suspect on both sides. I think the actual answer is, "The movie industry employs a bunch of people. The tech industry employs a whole lot more and generally uses a much flatter pay-scale, so the economy is getting more out of the tech industry than the movie industry (since more of the money that trickles down into employees pockets is being spent on living expenses instead of going to an off-shore account).

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"Facebook apps economy alone created nearly 500,000 jobs."

This means the number of people employed in areas and businesses based on apps that work in Facebook - Facebook games like Farmville, to name one example. Mike didn't say that Facebook itself, the company, had 500K employees.

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Might I ask what membership in unions have to do with employment? I mean it may be a requirement to be a member of a union to be employed, but by no means is it required to be employed to be a member of a union.

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"So you compare the direct number of people employed in the motion picture industry (which is suspect due to SAG and AFTRA alone having a membership of 300,000)"

But how many of them are working AS PERFORMERS IN FILM/TV at any one time?
How many card-carrying actors/actresses are waiters/barristas/office workers looking for their next auditions?
Just because they're SAG/AFTRA members doesn't mean they're working, even in the best of times!

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Facebook creates an eco-system that creates jobs that contribute to the economy. Big Content tries to sue anyone who even thinks about an eco-system that's not under their absolute control.

Once eco-system drives job creation, the other just makes millionaires richer, shuts down thriving eco-systems by limiting or killing new emerging technology and innovation and takes money out of the economy.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the movie industry actually employs 374,000 people

So you compare the direct number of people employed in the motion picture industry (which is suspect due to SAG and AFTRA alone having a membership of 300,000) then add 113,000 from IATSE and another 15,000 DGA members plus Teamster drivers you're already over 400,000 without adding a single regular employee of the studios)

So Mike provides an *actual citation* for his numbers, and you try to claim he's wrong by providing unsubstantiated numbers about different organizations that have 1) membership overlaps and 2) do not directly employ people?

Hollywood accounting has ruined your ability to count.
You need to *STEP OUT OF THE HOLLYWOOD BUBBLE*. The way that Hollywood counts things is *NOT* the way normal people count things.

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Don't the movie industry make roughly the same as the dog food industry or something? I remember hearing that somewhere and it always made me think I'd rather shift my entertainment money to buying $80 bags of dog food than support the movie and recording industries in any way. It may be stupid to spend that much on dog kibble, but it makes sense the money I spend should be proportional to how important the industry is to me.

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"people were left to comment on the radio show's website... where the vast, vast majority of folks were quick to pick apart Hackford's ridiculous claims and ask the station why it didn't have anyone expressing a counterpoint."

I just don't think he wants to get into the type of debate that happens here. Too many kiddies with attitudes, like the dumbass threatening bodily harm earlier today. Do you honestly think that the callers would have been civil, and allowed for a different point of view? I suspect it would have been more name calling.

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How do you know the audience would have been uncivil or not? Yes, that guy a couple of posts back hoping for death was a jackass, but it doesn't mean that suddenly, there's no need to allow calls from the public.
The only type of debate I want to see is one where's there...ya know...debate, as in people arguing back and forth? Want to know why I'm here on Techdirt EVERY SINGLE DAY? It's because of this comments section. I can read the news articles elsewhere, but the comments section here can't be beat. I love talking back and forth. I love commenting on the article du jour and trying to put my point across.
There isn't a single opinion blog that I read that doesn't allow comments. The blogger could be the finest writer in the world, but if he's locked down his site and doesn't allow two-way communication, I'm not interested.

What's in a name?

I didn't honestly expect any better from the leader of the director's guild but in all honesty isn't it time to get by the Google conspiracy here? (Although I see some of our trolls trying to add Facebook and Wikipedia to the list as did Mr Hackford.)

I guess the whole world has to orbit around Hollywood and its self important fantasies about itself and its contribution to the economy. (Including "intellectual" property.)

It couldn't be that SOPA was everything the critics said it was could it? I couldn't be that the public got outraged that one industry was setting the agenda for the United States for the entire internet could it? It couldn't be the total lack of consultation outside the "entertainment industry" on this bill and PIPA could it? It couldn't be censorship could it?

Nahhh. it was Google, of course. According to Hollywood that's who "they" are. Though there must be room for Mike, too!

And that the call in show didn't allow for calls or have an opposing view presented couldn't be very close to undemocratic and "denying information" could it?

Nahhh. It's just that Mr Hackford has no time for other points of view and that's his idea of "meeting in the middle".

Is this one of those parallel universe movies? Apparently in Mr. Hackford's universe, the debate over SOPA and PIPA was a disagreement over whether copyright infringement is a good thing. Here on Earth Prime, it had to do with the architectural and cybersecurity implications of DNS blocking, and with the consensus of an enormous number of First Amendment scholars that a streamlined, non-adversarial process for blocking entire domains—illicit and protected speech alike—was in stark conflict with the core of our constitutional tradition.

Were the government's own top cybersecurity experts and computer scientists "duped" when they expressed opposition to this bill? Was Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe? Were scholars at think tanks across the ideological spectrum, from the Brookings Institution to the Heritage Foundation? To find this version of events credible, you have to believe that an enormous number of experts who studied the issue rigorously somehow fell for these "outright lies." I don't find that too plausible, and the effort to dismiss all that opposition as simply misinformed suggests an unwillingness to confront the real arguments they were making.

Lie #1 in your post: “..he repeatedly claimed that the movie industry employs two million people” No actually he said the ENTERTAINMENT industry, which covers way more than just the movie industry, employs 2,000,000 people. Furthermore, the claim that the Facebook app market alone is responsible for 500,000 jobs is ridiculous. Zynga is by far the largest Facebook app producer (they also produce apps for other platforms which is not true for all Facebook app producers) employs only 3,000 people. I think the study indicated that the app ecosystem is responsible for 500,000 jobs (but those are jobs created by the multiplier effect of economics). The same applies to the entertainment industry but part of the jobs in the Tech sector are the result of the entertainment industry – Netflix, iTunes, Amazon’s music, movies and books, etc...

Lie #2: That he completely ignored the concerns of engineers. What are the engineers’ concerns that lead the Blackout movement to claim that SOPA/PIPA would “break the internet” ? How does removing a sites registration “break the internet?” That is the misinformation that he was complaining about, and it was obviously addressed in the audio clip.

Regarding your claim that he wasn’t identifying those responsible for the Wikipedia blackout, it was the preceding statement when he was talking about the organizers of the blackout itself. Also he wasn’t referring to Wikipedia’s blackout as “robbing” information from the public. He was consistently referring to the fact that the organizers of the blackout withheld information (omitting the fact that only businesses whose PRIMARY purpose was illegally distributing media), and mislead the public (by claiming that the legislation would “break the internet”).

I’m glad that you pointed out the fact that people were complaining about the show’s failure to offer a counter point. That has been my complaint about this site for years – you have a myopic view of the situation and you offer only one side of the issues. When you do have guest contributors they share your opinion on the issues.

Furthermore, you completely ignore his argument when he points out that the tech industry itself is very ardent in its claims to IP for code. In fact the ironic thing is that anyone who registers for an account at TechDirt must agree to the Terms of Service for the InsightCommunity which includes some interesting language regarding the prohibition of reverse engineering the code on the site. For someone who champions the freedom of information that seems like a very machiavellian policy.

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Lie #1:
Depends on how you classify the entertainment industry, it may also include clowns and food services, but the motion pictures alone is responsible for only 340 thousand direct jobs.http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs038.htm

If you want to start using that number then it is fair to use the other number for the information industry that states that there are 3268 million people employed by it.http://www.bls.gov/news.release/prin2.htm

Lie #2:
Well duffus the thing is the proposal was not about delisting but blocking since the US don't have the power to demand other countries delist anything so they would force a blockade inside the US which was explained in very clear terms why would cause problems to DNSSEC which you obviously know nothing about it, otherwise you wouldn't have used the term delist in the first place.

Besides nobody withheld any information SOPA and PIPA would have granted broad powers to censor anything not just the worse of the worst, that you punks don't talk about it do you? You also don't tell anyone that copyright is not black and white and there is no way to know what is legal or illegal just by looking at it, someone has to show that one was granted permission or not and that can only happen if somebody produces some sort of document. SOPA breaks the internet for business that would not want to be liable for anything and would start removing a lot of content just to be on the safe side.

About the code, have you visit Sourceforge recently?
Or Userscripts.org?

You keep coming here and spewing the same BS and get trounced over and over again, I do understand that this is a job for you but really don't you get just a bit concerned with your soul for lying this much?

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Lie #1 in your post: “..he repeatedly claimed that the movie industry employs two million people” No actually he said the ENTERTAINMENT industry, which covers way more than just the movie industry, employs 2,000,000 people.

OK, so the movie industry employs 374K. Where do you get the rest? Please provide citations that the 2M figure is accurate.

Lie #2: That he completely ignored the concerns of engineers. What are the engineers’ concerns that lead the Blackout movement to claim that SOPA/PIPA would “break the internet” ? How does removing a sites registration “break the internet?” That is the misinformation that he was complaining about, and it was obviously addressed in the audio clip.

So "lie #2" is really just "the absolute truth, with a whole bunch of misdirection"? Typical.

He was consistently referring to the fact that the organizers of the blackout withheld information (omitting the fact that only businesses whose PRIMARY purpose was illegally distributing media)

Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. SOPA defined "primary purpose" pretty much as "any site with a comment box". You are lying through your teeth trying to apologize here.

and mislead the public (by claiming that the legislation would “break the internet”).

The experts were not just saying SOPA and PIPA would "break the internet", they were explaining why. Please, if you're going to try to claim that an *EXPERT* isn't correct about something, after they explain in detail why they are saying what they are saying, you have to come up with something other than "nuh-uh!"

Maddox already explained it.

"They" did NOT rob anyone

I've changed my name to "they," so this person is on very thin ice claiming that I (meaning "they") robbed anyone of anything. They (meaning Taylor Hackford, not me) better watch their (again, Taylor Hackford, not me) back for lawyers. They (meaning the lawyers, not me, and certainly not Taylor Hackford) like this sorta stuff because they (lawyers again) get to practice their (umm, lawyers...) art against them (Taylor Hackford and the like, not me nor the lawyers) and their (Taylor Hackford again) lawyers. I (meaning they) don't need these sorts of accusations because my (meaning their) life has gotten really confusing since changing me (their) name to "they."

Having an industry unrelated to providing internet being able to determine whether a site may continue to have it's registration on their whim without any evidence most certainly would break the internet. You think they wouldn't take down google, or any other company or website that does not agree with them? They could legally use mafia tactics and require website pay them for user generated content protection, or else they will have to "monitor" the website for the first sign of infringement which they will then take down access to the website. Yes, giving an industry power to take down any website of it's choice off the internet has the possibility to break the internet. After all, I hear that most pirates use this DNS system to find pirated material, better start there....

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Actually Masnick's reality distortion field seems to be working on this site.

Some of the gems I have seen on this site - not necessarily the comments of Mike, but none-the-less the general attitude of many people here:

It's not piracy it's file sharing
Piracy isn't theft
Never buy another thing from the MFIAAs
Google doesn't profit from piracy
Infringing sites aren't making money
The technology industry saved the entertainment industry
Step2
Copyright law was written to serve the people
Media companies don't help performers
Musicians need to get creative and stop trying to make their money from selling their music.

The truth is that Mike would be happy if Copyright laws either didn't exist or were so limited in their reach that it allowed for unlimited distribution and duplication. Ultimately, that scenario would severly decrease the number of people that would be willing to create content.

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The truth is that Mike would be happy if Copyright laws either didn't exist or were so limited in their reach that it allowed for unlimited distribution and duplication. Ultimately, that scenario would severly decrease the number of people that would be willing to create content.

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Now now now. We all know that's not how it works. We all know that the accuser gets to make any wild ass accusations they damn well please, and its up to the accused to prove that these accusations aren't true, not the other way around, haven't you ever seen a trial of evidence before!

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Not sure it would decrease the number of people, but it seems a safe bet that fewer people would be willing to make investments of time and money tending towards at least the high end of the time/money scale.

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Is not only Mike who would be happy, any creative person would be free to create something and have a fair chance at selling it and despite all the competition he would be able to do it in peace without having parasites trying to charge him absurd fees.

CopyBS only is advantageous to the parasites that want to extract rent from others without having to do any work.

Re: “Piracy isn't theft”

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Some of the gems I have seen on this site - not necessarily the comments of Mike, but none-the-less the general attitude of many people here:

Not mentioned: that every one of these "gems" is either a) factually true, or b) a perfectly valid viewpoint.

Obviously you won't belive me, so let's go throug it:

It's not piracy it's file sharing

There have been a couple "piracy is for Somalian gangsters and Johnny Depp" posts, but I don't think that's what you're referring to.

If you're talking about "piracy" as it's talked about nowadays, meaning "internet piracy," then "file sharing" is exactly the right term to describe it. The people who upload copyrighted content, by and large, are not making money off of the upload, are not charging for access to content, and are not selling content. "File sharing" is exactly the right term to describe such people.

That statement has mainly been a response to the lumping together of counterfeiters, e.g. enterprises that sell counterfeit goods (such as handbags), and entities who charge for access to specific content, with people who simply upload stuff that they like to some Internet site. All of these entities are completely different, and act for completely different reasons. It is both practically and morally disingenuous to conflate those groups.

Piracy isn't theft

Objectively true. This is settled as a matter of law. The Supreme Court said, explicitly, that copyright infringement is not theft in Dowling v. United States. Piracy is not theft, and never was.

Never buy another thing from the MFIAAs

If you are against the "MAFIAAs," then a consumer boycott is exactly the right thing to do.

Google doesn't profit from piracy

True. They don't, and nobody, ever, has been able to successfully show that they do. They're a big company, and obviously some infringing content is bound to slip through the cracks. But they are incredibly anal about cutting off the AdSense accounts of infringers (notoriously so), and they have gone above and beyond what has been required by law do deal with infringement (including providing tools that remove non-infringing content, such as the MegaUpload song). The percentage of money that they earn from infringement is vastly less that even the major labels'.

First of all, nobody claimed that. They claimed that the technology industry gave the entertainment industry the tools to save themselves, and the entertainment industry ignored them. Given the fact that the entertainment industry has been reluctant to adopt every single technological change that ended up making them money, this is not an unreasonable claim. (See, e.g., player pianos, radio, VCR's, MP3's, etc.)

Step2

I'm not even sure what that means. Yes, it exists, and its goal is to help artists make money. What's you're point?

Copyright law was written to serve the people

The truth is even stronger than this. Copyright law exists to benefit the public, and for no other reason. Copyright holders may benefit, but this isn't the purpose of copyright law, and such benefits must ultimately serve the public good.

This is not even debatable. Not only is it explicit in the preamble to the Copyright Clause ("To promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts"), it has been explicitly stated, repeatedly, by the Supreme Court.

Media companies don't help performers

Media companies previously held a monopoly on the airwaves (radio, TV, etc). In order to get access to them, performers had to sign over their copyrights to the media companies, and usually did not get paid for that privilege.

I have no experience with the movie industry, but I know from foolish friends that the music industry does not pay performers at all. If you are a performing artist, you do not own the rights to your performances. You are forced to pay back every penny of the recording costs out of your own royalties (they are around 15% - meaning that by the time you make your first penny, the record label has earned about five times the cost of the recording). According to the RIAA itself (in the 90's, when record labels were earning money hand over foot), 90% of performers on their labels were not recouped - meaning they did not make any money whatsoever from their recordings. Even among recouped artists (such as Paul McCartney), recorded music sales are only a tiny fraction of their total income from music.

The labels never paid performers. That means the only way they "helped" was to make the music available to a wider audience... exactly like file sharing sites do today. But unlike media companies, file sharing sites don't require that you sign over your copyrights to them.

And, even more luckily, there are businesses that realize that a better business model is to enable music rather than be a gatekeeper to music. Businesses like CD Baby, TuneCore, BandCamp, SoundCloud, or YouTube, which are actually treating artists like they should be treated, and have helped create a new middle class of artists that never existed before.

Musicians need to get creative and stop trying to make their money from selling their music.

Musicians never made their money from selling their music. At least, not if "selling their music" means "selling copies of their recordings."

If "selling your music" includes B2B licensing, live performances, charging for direct access to the musicians, or any one of a dozen other things that involve selling rivalrous goods, then nobody here has ever had a problem with it. In fact, that's what Mike's business models are based upon: focusing on rivalrous goods, rather than wasting time, energy, and money trying to prevent public goods from being public goods.

So, basically, you're criticizing this site for being absolutely correct.

This is...

If they truly care about protecting artists rights, then make DEBATED reasonable laws to give the artists idividual right on a case by case basis, not rights to a media company representative and their company based priorities

If an artists trully feels they are being hurt by the internet, then give them the SOLE right to bring the issue up to the governing body, and a law to bar shady activity by media providers to influence or instigate a prefarable outcome on any given occasion.
Include a law that gives artists the right to sue their own media company if they were so inclined, if the there is clear indication of attempted influence.
Have a pre determined, lawfully bound, amount of money fined from their media company awarded to artist, assuming the case can be proven.
Fine wise, high enough that it just takes one win for the content provider to feel a true sting, and also high enough so that the artist can retire from said reward if so inclined, does'nt have to worry about suing their bread and butter

Media companies get what they supposedly want, and we get a clearer indication on artists opinions on the subject, and to be honest, a clearer indication on who to avoid

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The artists in most cases gave up their rights to the music when they agreed to accept money from the Media companies. The way it works is that you sign a contract that says they will make you a star and both you and the company will split the profit. The media company pays for everything up front, the studio rental, the engineers, the duplication, the distribution, the marketing, etc... Effectively the media company invested tens of thousands of dollars in the musician's work. In exchange for this investment the media company retains the rights to sell the product (movie, song, book, etc..). That means that in most cases the person who created the content does not have rights to that content because they don't own it. Hence the term "sell out".

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cheers mate, as much as your post shows my ignorance on the subject, i still do appreaciate a well thought out and informative post and to me thats what your post was, and without malice no less, i like your style buddy
I might be so bold as to say that i have a slighly better understanding on the subject after you're post, and i dont get to say that about many posts

Doing everyone a favor...

When you think about it the Content Cartels and the DOJ are actually doing everyone a favor. By pursuing the policies and tactics that they are they are creating the necessity for more and better security and privacy technologies. From the fact that centralized servers were the Achilles Heel for Napster, the P2P model was developed. Likewise, BitTorrent removed tracing the transfers by packet sniffing. Add the more recent contributions of Tor and PeerBlock and a new perspective starts to unfold. Now with concentrated attacks on DNS it's only a matter of time before a truly effective P2P DNS model is adopted. As "necessity is the mother of invention," maybe we should just think of them as Security R & D.

Re: Re: Doing everyone a favor...

I first said that years ago during the Napster heyday watching the RIAA shoot themselves in the foot by continuing the very public lawsuit that very effectively served as advertising for the service driving there user base through the roof.

Ok.. enough is enough

I just finished listening to Hackford's nutty rant and I've had it. Congratulations Hackford, you've put me over the edge enough to sign-up and post a comment directed at you and all of the Chris Dodd/US Representative types.

First off, I'm not an "engineer." What I am is smart enough to ask questions and wrap my brain around the answers. Not to mention capable of researching and finding all angles of a story.

I'm insulted by the repeated insinuation of the film and movie industry that I couldn't possible come up with a conclusion all on my own. You want to know what part Google plays in all of this? Google allowed me to conduct my research. Google didn't suppress either side nor completely block my access to information.

Do you want to know what the biggest shocker you'll learn about me? I am not into piracy. Yep.. that's right.. I don't want your crappy music or movies for free. You want to know what else I don't do? Regularly purchase movies/music or go watch movies. That's right, I haven't purchased music in the last five years and last year I attended the movies once. It's obvious that the industry doesn't care, but I'm just going to go ahead and say what I want. A theater experience where I don't feel like my family was robbed in broad daylight. Entertainment that is portable. Ability to actually own what I purchase. Entertainment that is flexible enough that I'm not trying out some Houdini tech move just because I got a wild hair to listen to music on my iPod while I work out.

Lastly, and more importantly, I do not want you Director Guild/MPAA/RIAA types to have the authority to randomly suppress internet content or my voice. Once you start shutting down sites deemed "rogue" where does it stop? Prosecute people who access "rogue" sites? Let's be honest with ourselves. There are already a chocking number of copyright laws on the books. The industry didn't need bills like SOPA or PIPA. The industry already has enough control.. just not ultimate control.

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Phantoms

There were plenty of official sources giving out usually factual details on SOPA and those were scary enough. Many tens of thousands of us directly rallied against SOPA because of this.

Then there is another element in this when I have seen my own ideas travel about to thousands of people. My rallying theory is the not untrue claim that these laws are an attack on the Indie market and an Internet land-grab.

The general population don't want a technical breakdown of what this exactly means when they just want some basic concept that they can rally behind. Something that can scare them into thinking "this is just not right"

So right here [wave] is one of their reasons. There are of course plenty others when I certainly cant cover every community but I did at least rally a few thousand.

I can certainly do the same for ACTA and to give the world a horror story that would rally them. Let me scare you...

1. Under international law a trade agreement overrides national laws. This is why it has been often said that ACTA will stop Congress setting the IP laws it wants.

2. ACTA contains many points that are very vague and open to different interpretations. It would be nice for each country to set its own definition but this certainly wont happen.

3. International law is very clear when it comes to the clarification of vague points then it says to refer to the points made during the original discussions. Those discussions we know were conducted in secret.

What this means is that countries have signed a very vague trade agreement that NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUE MEANING OF WHEN THOSE CREATION DOCUMENTS ARE HELD IN SECRET.

This also means that only once ACTA has been ratified by these countries and court case start will some of those documents be released. When it comes to vague terms like "commercial infringement" then clearly we have a big problem.

This is certainly all true & somewhere here are my notes which prove it. Maybe this situation explains why the United States long refused to make ACTA public denying any such request as "harming national security"

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"I'd rather have Google running the world, at least you know they'll do it right."

Dunno who said it, or where I heard that from, but, let's be honest, would you rather have the U.S. Government, Big Business (Content, Banks, ETC), or Google (or something similar) calling all the shots?

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Google would be an interesting combination of 1984 and an ideal libertarian state. On one hand they're always watching everything you do, and on the other they only use it for advertising and besides that let you do what you want.

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Would you rather have the U.S. Government, Big Business (Content, Banks, ETC), or Google (or something similar) calling all the shots?

Google, hands down. They're both evil, but Google is at least half-competent. The current idiots are happy to let the entire country burn down around them as long as the bribes keep flowing. We need evil dictators that think long-term, not short-term.

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We've been having the RIAA fearmonger over everything from player pianos to MP3s - even if the SOPA protest "was an exercise in fear-mongering", so what? Does the RIAA have a monopoly on bullshit, now?

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I have a question about the upcoming Black March boycott. Why was March the month selected, and not a month in the summer? Summer is Hollywood's blockbuster season, and I believe a sustained boycott would hurt them much more at that time than in the spring, unless I have overlooked something.

So you complain about someone making up employment statistics, and to back up your claims, you cite a study that estimates job creation based on the number of want ads that appear.

And to top it off, you compare the number of people directly employed full-time in the film industry (as counted by the 2500 employees of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on an ongoing basis) to the number of jobs which may have been created in the "app economy" based off of a one-time estimate by a single company. The amount of jobs created gives no indication to the amount of jobs sustained or the number of people employed; someone can very easily bounce from job to job as new ones are created and old ones disappear.

And as a cherry on the top, you then take that estimate of 466,000 and call it "nearly 500,000", thus creating another 30,000+ jobs out of thin air.